One Is Not Born A Woman is the text of a speech given at the City Uni­ver­sity of New York Gra­duate Cen­ter, Sep­tem­ber 1979. It was first publis­hed in French as « On ne nait pas femme » in the jour­nal Ques­ti­ons Fémi­nis­tes, no. 8, mai 1980. The english ver­sion was first publis­hed in Femi­nist Issues vol. 1 no. 2 (Win­ter 1981).

A mate­ria­list femi­nist [1] approach to women’s opp­res­sion des­troys the idea that women are a « natu­ral group » : « a racial group of a spe­cial kind, a group per­cei­ved as natu­ral, a group of men con­side­red as mate­ri­ally spe­ci­fic in their bodies. » [2] What the ana­ly­sis accom­plis­hes on the level of ideas, prac­tice makes actual at the level of facts : by its very exis­tence, les­bian society des­troys the arti­fi­cial (social) fact con­sti­tu­ting women as a « natu­ral group. » A les­bian society [3] prag­ma­ti­cally reve­als that the divi­sion from men of which women have been the object is a poli­ti­cal one and shows that we have been ideo­lo­gi­cally rebuilt into a « natu­ral group. » In the case of women, ideo­logy goes far since our bodies as well as our minds are the pro­duct of this mani­pu­la­tion. We have been com­pel­led in our bodies and in our minds to cor­re­spond, fea­ture by fea­ture, with the idea of nature that has been esta­blis­hed for us. Dis­tor­ted to such an extent that our defor­med body is what they call « natu­ral, » what is sup­po­sed to exist as such before opp­res­sion. Dis­tor­ted to such an extent that in the end opp­res­sion seems to be a con­se­quence of this « nature » wit­hin our­sel­ves (a nature which is only an idea). What a mate­ria­list ana­ly­sis does by rea­so­n­ing, a les­bian society accom­plis­hes prac­tically : not only is there no natu­ral group « women » (we les­bi­ans are living proof of it), but as indi­vi­du­als as well we ques­tion « woman, » which for us, as for Simone de Beau­voir, is only a myth. She said : « One is not born, but beco­mes a woman. No bio­lo­gi­cal, psy­cho­lo­gi­cal, or eco­no­mic fate deter­mi­nes the figure that the human female pres­ents in society : it is civi­liza­tion as a whole that pro­du­ces this crea­ture, inter­me­diate bet­ween male and eunuch, which is descri­bed as femi­nine. » [4]

Howe­ver, most of the femi­nists and lesbian-​​feminists in Ame­rica and else­where still believe that the basis of women’s opp­res­sion is bio­lo­gi­cal as well as his­to­ri­cal. Some of them even claim to find their sour­ces in Simone de Beau­voir. [5] The belief in mother right and in a « pre­history » when women crea­ted civi­liza­tion (because of a bio­lo­gi­cal pre­dis­po­si­tion) while the coarse and bru­tal men hun­ted (because of a bio­lo­gi­cal pre­dis­po­si­tion) is sym­me­tri­cal with the bio­lo­gi­zing inter­pre­ta­tion of history pro­du­ced up to now by the class of men. It is still the same method of fin­ding in women and men a bio­lo­gi­cal expla­na­tion of their divi­sion, outs­ide of social facts. For me this could never con­sti­tute a les­bian approach to women’s opp­res­sion, since it assu­mes that the basis of society or the begin­ning of society lies in hete­ro­se­xua­lity. Matri­ar­chy is no less hete­ro­se­xual than patri­ar­chy : it is only the sex of the opp­res­sor that chan­ges. Fur­ther­more, not only is this con­cep­tion still impri­soned in the cate­go­ries of sex (woman and man), but it holds onto the idea that the capa­city to give birth (bio­logy) is what defi­nes a woman. Alt­hough prac­tical facts and ways of living con­tra­dict this theory in les­bian society, there are les­bi­ans who affirm that « women and men are dif­fe­rent spe­cies or races (the words are used inter­ch­an­ge­ably) : men are bio­lo­gi­cally infe­rior to women; male vio­lence is a bio­lo­gi­cal ine­vi­ta­bi­lity … » [6] By doing this, by admit­ting that there is a « natu­ral » divi­sion bet­ween women and men, we natu­ra­lize history, we assume that « men » and « women » have always exis­ted and will always exist. Not only do we natu­ra­lize history, but also con­se­quently we natu­ra­lize the social pheno­mena which express our opp­res­sion, making change impos­si­ble. For example, instead of see­ing giving birth as a forced pro­duc­tion, we see it as a « natu­ral, » « bio­lo­gi­cal » pro­cess, for­get­ting that in our socie­ties births are plan­ned (demo­gra­phy), for­get­ting that we our­sel­ves are pro­gram­med to pro­duce child­ren, while this is the only social activity « short of war » [7] that pres­ents such a great dan­ger of death. Thus, as long as we will be « unable to aban­don by will or impulse a lifelong and centuries-​​old com­mit­ment to child­bea­ring as the female crea­tive act, » [8] gai­ning con­trol of the pro­duc­tion of child­ren will mean much more than the mere con­trol of the mate­rial means of this pro­duc­tion : women will have to abstract them­sel­ves from the defi­ni­tion « woman » which is impo­sed upon them.

A mate­ria­list femi­nist approach shows that what we take for the cause or ori­gin of opp­res­sion is in fact only the mark [9] impo­sed by the opp­res­sor : the « myth of woman, » [10] plus its mate­rial effects and mani­fes­ta­ti­ons in the appro­pria­ted con­scious­ness and bodies of women. Thus, this mark does not pre­date opp­res­sion : Colette Guil­lau­min has shown that before the socio­eco­no­mic rea­lity of black sla­very, the con­cept of race did not exist, at least not in its modern mea­ning, since it was applied to the lineage of fami­lies. Howe­ver, now, race, exactly like sex, is taken as an « imme­diate given, » a « sen­si­ble given, » « phy­si­cal fea­tures, » belon­ging to a natu­ral order. But what we believe to be a phy­si­cal and direct per­cep­tion is only a sophisti­ca­ted and mythic con­struc­tion, an « ima­gi­nary for­ma­tion, » [11] which rein­ter­prets phy­si­cal fea­tures (in them­sel­ves as neu­tral as any others but mar­ked by the social sys­tem) through the net­work of rela­ti­onships in which they are per­cei­ved. (They are seen as black, the­re­fore they are black; they are seen as women, the­re­fore, they are women. But before being seen that way, they first had to be made that way.) Les­bi­ans should always remem­ber and ack­now­ledge how « unna­tu­ral, » com­pel­ling, totally opp­res­sive, and destruc­tive being « woman » was for us in the old days before the women’s libe­ra­tion move­ment. It was a poli­ti­cal cons­traint, and those who resis­ted it were accu­sed of not being « real » women. But then we were proud of it, since in the accu­sa­tion there was alre­ady some­thing like a shadow of vic­tory : the avo­wal by the opp­res­sor that « woman » is not some­thing that goes wit­hout say­ing, since to be one, one has to be a « real » one. We were at the same time accu­sed of wan­ting to be men. Today this dou­ble accu­sa­tion has been taken up again with enthu­si­asm in the con­text of the women’s libe­ra­tion move­ment by some femi­nists and also, alas, by some les­bi­ans whose poli­ti­cal goal seems somehow to be beco­m­ing more and more « femi­nine. » To refuse to be a woman, howe­ver, does not mean that one has to become a man. Besi­des, if we take as an example the per­fect « butch, » the clas­sic example which pro­vo­kes the most hor­ror, whom Proust would have cal­led a woman/​man, how is her alie­na­tion dif­fe­rent from that of someone who wants to become a woman ? Tweed­le­dum and Tweed­le­dee. At least for a woman, wan­ting to become a man pro­ves that she has escaped her initial pro­gramming. But even if she would like to, with all her strength, she can­not become a man. For beco­m­ing a man would demand from a woman not only a man’s exter­nal appearance but his con­scious­ness as well, that is, the con­scious­ness of one who dis­po­ses by right of at least two « natu­ral » sla­ves during his life span. This is impos­si­ble, and one fea­ture of les­bian opp­res­sion con­sists pre­ci­sely of making women out of reach for us, since women belong to men. Thus a les­bian has to be some­thing else, a not-​​woman, a not­man, a pro­duct of society, not a pro­duct of nature, for there is no nature in society.

The refu­sal to become (or to remain) hete­ro­se­xual always meant to refuse to become a man or a woman, con­sciously or not. For a les­bian this goes fur­ther than the refu­sal of the role « woman. » It is the refu­sal of the eco­no­mic, ideo­lo­gi­cal, and poli­ti­cal power of a man. This, we les­bi­ans, and non­les­bi­ans as well, knew before the begin­ning of the les­bian and femi­nist move­ment. Howe­ver, as Andrea Dwor­kin empha­si­zes, many les­bi­ans recently « have incre­a­sin­gly tried to trans­form the very ideo­logy that has ens­la­ved us into a dyna­mic, reli­gious, psy­cho­lo­gi­cally com­pel­ling cele­bra­tion of female bio­lo­gi­cal poten­tial. » [12] Thus, some ave­nues of the femi­nist and les­bian move­ment lead us back to the myth of woman which was crea­ted by men espe­cially for us, and with it we sink back into a natu­ral group. Having stood up to fight for a sex­less society, [13] we now find our­sel­ves ent­rap­ped in the fami­liar dead­lock of « woman is won­der­ful. » Simone de Beau­voir under­lined par­ti­cu­larly the false con­scious­ness which con­sists of selec­ting among the fea­tures of the myth (that women are dif­fe­rent from men) those which look good and using them as a defi­ni­tion for women. What the con­cept « woman is won­der­ful » accom­plis­hes is that it retains for defi­ning women the best fea­tures (best accor­ding to whom ?) which opp­res­sion has gran­ted us, and it does not radi­cally ques­tion the cate­go­ries « man » and « woman, » which are poli­ti­cal cate­go­ries and not natu­ral givens. It puts us in a posi­tion of fight­ing wit­hin the class « women » not as the other clas­ses do, for the disap­pearance of our class, but for the defense of « woman » and its reen­force­ment. It leads us to deve­lop with com­pla­cency « new » theo­ries about our spe­ci­fi­city : thus, we call our pas­si­vity « non­vio­lence, » when the main and emer­gent point for us is to fight our pas­si­vity (our fear, rather, a justi­fied one). The ambi­guity of the term « femi­nist » sums up the whole situa­tion. What does « femi­nist » mean ? Femi­nist is for­med with the word « femme, » « woman, » and means : someone who fights for women. For many of us it means someone who fights for women as a class and for the disap­pearance of this class. For many others it means someone who fights for woman and her defense — for the myth, then, and its reen­force­ment. But why was the word « femi­nist » cho­sen if it retains the least ambi­guity ? We chose to call our­sel­ves « femi­nists » ten years ago, not in order to sup­port or reen­force the myth of woman, nor to iden­tify our­sel­ves with the oppressor’s defi­ni­tion of us, but rather to affirm that our move­ment had a history and to empha­size the poli­ti­cal link with the old femi­nist move­ment.

It is, then, this move­ment that we can put in ques­tion for the mea­ning that it gave to femi­nism. It so hap­pens that femi­nism in the last cen­tury could never resolve its con­tra­dic­tions on the sub­ject of nature/​culture, woman/​society. Women star­ted to fight for them­sel­ves as a group and rightly con­side­red that they shared com­mon fea­tures as a result of opp­res­sion. But for them these fea­tures were natu­ral and bio­lo­gi­cal rather than social. They went so far as to adopt the Dar­wi­nist theory of evo­lu­tion. They did not believe like Dar­win, howe­ver, « that women were less evol­ved than men, but they did believe that male and female natures had diver­ged in the course of evo­lu­tio­nary deve­lop­ment and that society at large reflec­ted this pola­riza­tion. » [14] « The failure of early femi­nism was that it only atta­cked the Dar­wi­nist charge of female infe­rio­rity, while accep­ting the foun­da­ti­ons of this charge — namely, the view of woman as ‚uni­que.‘ » [15] And finally it was women scho­lars — and not femi­nists — who sci­en­ti­fi­cally des­troyed this theory. But the early femi­nists had fai­led to regard history as a dyna­mic pro­cess which deve­lops from con­flicts of inte­rests. Fur­ther­more, they still belie­ved as men do that the cause (ori­gin) of their opp­res­sion lay wit­hin them­sel­ves. And the­re­fore after some asto­nis­hing vic­to­ries the femi­nists of this first front found them­sel­ves at an impasse out of a lack of rea­sons to fight. They upheld the illo­gi­cal prin­ciple of « equa­lity in dif­fe­rence, » an idea now being born again. They fell back into the trap which threa­tens us once again : the myth of woman.

Thus it is our his­to­ri­cal task, and only ours, to define what we call opp­res­sion in mate­ria­list terms, to make it evi­dent that women are a class, which is to say that the cate­gory « woman » as well as the cate­gory « man » are poli­ti­cal and eco­no­mic cate­go­ries not eter­nal ones. Our fight aims to sup­p­ress men as a class, not through a geno­ci­dal, but a poli­ti­cal struggle. Once the class « men » disap­pears, « women » as a class will disap­pear as well, for there are no sla­ves wit­hout mas­ters. Our first task, it seems, is to always tho­roughly dis­so­ciate « women » (the class wit­hin which we fight) and « woman, » the myth. For « woman » does not exist for us : it is only an ima­gi­nary for­ma­tion, while « women » is the pro­duct of a social rela­ti­onship. We felt this stron­gly when ever­y­where we refu­sed to be cal­led a « woman’s libe­ra­tion move­ment. » Fur­ther­more, we have to des­troy the myth inside and outs­ide our­sel­ves. « Woman » is not each one of us, but the poli­ti­cal and ideo­lo­gi­cal for­ma­tion which nega­tes « women » (the pro­duct of a rela­tion of exploi­ta­tion). « Woman » is there to con­fuse us, to hide the rea­lity « women. » In order to be aware of being a class and to become a class we first have to kill the myth of « woman » inclu­ding its most seduc­tive aspects (I think about Vir­gi­nia Woolf when she said the first task of a woman wri­ter is to kill « the angel in the house »). But to become a class we do not have to sup­p­ress our indi­vi­dual sel­ves, and since no indi­vi­dual can be redu­ced to her/​his opp­res­sion we are also con­fron­ted with the his­to­ri­cal neces­sity of con­sti­tu­ting our­sel­ves as the indi­vi­dual sub­jects of our history as well. I believe this is the rea­son why all these attempts at « new » defi­ni­ti­ons of woman are blosso­m­ing now. What is at stake (and of course not only for women) is an indi­vi­dual defi­ni­tion as well as a class defi­ni­tion. For once one has ack­now­ledged opp­res­sion, one needs to know and expe­ri­ence the fact that one can con­sti­tute one­self as a sub­ject (as oppo­sed to an object of opp­res­sion), that one can become someone in spite of opp­res­sion, that one has one’s own iden­tity. There is no pos­si­ble fight for someone depri­ved of an iden­tity, no inter­nal moti­va­tion for fight­ing, since, alt­hough I can fight only with others, first I fight for mys­elf.

The ques­tion of the indi­vi­dual sub­ject is his­to­ri­cally a dif­fi­cult one for ever­y­body. Mar­xism, the last ava­tar of mate­ria­lism, the sci­ence which has poli­ti­cally for­med us, does not want to hear anything about a « sub­ject. » Mar­xism has rejec­ted the trans­cen­den­tal sub­ject, the sub­ject as con­sti­tu­tive of know­ledge, the « pure » con­scious­ness. All that thinks per se, before all expe­ri­ence, has ended up in the gar­bage can of history, because it clai­med to exist outs­ide mat­ter, prior to mat­ter, and nee­ded God, spi­rit, or soul to exist in such a way. This is what is cal­led « idea­lism. » As for indi­vi­du­als, they are only the pro­duct of social rela­ti­ons, the­re­fore their con­scious­ness can only be « alie­na­ted. » (Marx, in The Ger­man Ideo­logy, says pre­ci­sely that indi­vi­du­als of the domi­na­ting class are also alie­na­ted, alt­hough they are the direct pro­du­cers of the ideas that alie­nate the clas­ses opp­res­sed by them. But since they draw visi­ble advan­ta­ges from their own alie­na­tion they can bear it wit­hout too much suf­fe­ring.) There exists such a thing as class con­scious­ness, but a con­scious­ness which does not refer to a par­ti­cu­lar sub­ject, except as par­ti­ci­pa­ting in gene­ral con­di­ti­ons of exploi­ta­tion at the same time as the other sub­jects of their class, all sharing the same con­scious­ness. As for the prac­tical class pro­blems — outs­ide of the class pro­blems as tra­di­tio­nally defined — that one could encoun­ter (for example, sexual pro­blems), they were con­side­red « bour­geois » pro­blems that would disap­pear with the final vic­tory of the class struggle. « Indi­vi­dua­listic, » « sub­jec­tivist, » « petit bour­geois, » these were the labels given to any per­son who had shown pro­blems which could not be redu­ced to the « class struggle » its­elf.

Thus Mar­xism has denied the mem­bers of opp­res­sed clas­ses the attri­bute of being a sub­ject. In doing this, Mar­xism, because of the ideo­lo­gi­cal and poli­ti­cal power this « revo­lu­tio­nary sci­ence » imme­dia­tely exer­ci­sed upon the workers‘ move­ment and all other poli­ti­cal groups, has preven­ted all cate­go­ries of opp­res­sed peo­p­les from con­sti­tu­ting them­sel­ves his­to­ri­cally as sub­jects (sub­jects of their struggle, for example). This means that the « mas­ses » did not fight for them­sel­ves but for the party or its orga­niza­ti­ons. And when an eco­no­mic trans­for­ma­tion took place (end of pri­vate pro­perty, con­sti­tu­tion of the socia­list state), no revo­lu­tio­nary change took place wit­hin the new society, because the people them­sel­ves did not change.

For women, Mar­xism had two results. It preven­ted them from being aware that they are a class and the­re­fore from con­sti­tu­ting them­sel­ves as a class for a very long time, by lea­ving the rela­tion « women/​men » outs­ide of the social order, by turning it into a natu­ral rela­tion, doubt­less for Mar­xists the only one, along with the rela­tion of mothers to child­ren, to be seen this way, and by hiding the class con­flict bet­ween men and women behind a nat ural divi­sion of labor (The Ger­man Ideo­logy). This con­cerns the theo­re­ti­cal (ideo­lo­gi­cal) level. On the prac­tical level, Lenin, the party, all the com­mu­nist par­ties up to now, inclu­ding all the most radi­cal poli­ti­cal groups, have always reac­ted to any attempt on the part of women to reflect and form groups based on their own class pro­blem with an accu­sa­tion of divi­siv­en­ess. By unit­ing, we women are divi­ding the strength of the people. This means that for the Mar­xists women belong eit­her to the bour­geois class or to the pro­le­ta­riat class, in other words, to the men of these clas­ses. In addi­tion, Mar­xist theory does not allow women any more than other clas­ses of opp­res­sed people to con­sti­tute them­sel­ves as his­to­ri­cal sub­jects, because Mar­xism does not take into account the fact that a class also con­sists of indi­vi­du­als one by one. Class con­scious­ness is not enough. We must try to under­stand phi­lo­so­phi­cally (poli­ti­cally) these con­cepts of « sub­ject » and « class con­scious­ness » and how they work in rela­tion to our history. When we dis­co­ver that women are the objects of opp­res­sion and appro­pria­tion, at the very moment that we become able to per­ceive this, we become sub­jects in the sense of cogni­tive sub­jects, through an ope­ra­tion of abstrac­tion. Con­scious­ness of opp­res­sion is not only a reac­tion to (fight against) opp­res­sion. It is also the whole con­cep­tual ree­va­lua­tion of the social world, its whole reor­ga­niza­tion with new con­cepts, from the point of view of opp­res­sion. It is what I would call the sci­ence of opp­res­sion crea­ted by the opp­res­sed. This ope­ra­tion of under­stan­ding rea­lity has to be under­ta­ken by every one of us : call it a sub­jec­tive, cogni­tive prac­tice. The move­ment back and forth bet­ween the levels of rea­lity (the con­cep­tual rea­lity and the mate­rial rea­lity of opp­res­sion, which are both social rea­li­ties) is accom­plis­hed through lan­guage.

It is we who his­to­ri­cally must under­take the task of defi­ning the indi­vi­dual sub­ject in mate­ria­list terms. This cer­tainly seems to be an impos­si­bi­lity since mate­ria­lism and sub­jec­tivity have always been mutually exclu­sive. Nevert­he­l­ess, and rather than des­pai­ring of ever under­stan­ding, we must reco­gnize the need to reach sub­jec­tivity in the aban­don­ment by many of us to the myth « woman » (the myth of woman being only a snare that holds us up). This real neces­sity for ever­yone to exist as an indi­vi­dual, as well as a mem­ber of a class, is per­haps the first con­di­tion for the accom­plish­ment of a revo­lu­tion, wit­hout which there can be no real fight or trans­for­ma­tion. But the oppo­site is also true; wit­hout class and class con­scious­ness there are no real sub­jects, only alie­na­ted indi­vi­du­als. For women to ans­wer the ques­tion of the indi­vi­dual sub­ject in mate­ria­list terms is first to show, as the les­bi­ans and femi­nists did, that sup­po­sedly « sub­jec­tive, » « indi­vi­dual, » « pri­vate » pro­blems are in fact social pro­blems, class pro­blems; that sexua­lity is not for women an indi­vi­dual and sub­jec­tive expres­sion, but a social insti­tu­tion of vio­lence. But once we have shown that all so-​​called per­so­nal pro­blems are in fact class pro­blems, we will still be left with the ques­tion of the sub­ject of each sin­gu­lar woman — not the myth, but each one of us. At this point, let us say that a new per­so­nal and sub­jec­tive defi­ni­tion for all human­kind can only be found beyond the cate­go­ries of sex (woman and man) and that the advent of indi­vi­dual sub­jects demands first des­troy­ing the cate­go­ries of sex, ending the use of them, and rejec­ting all sci­en­ces which still use these cate­go­ries as their fun­da­men­tals (prac­tically all social sci­en­ces).

To des­troy « woman » does not mean that we aim, short of phy­si­cal destruc­tion, to des­troy les­bia­nism simul­ta­neously with the cate­go­ries of sex, because les­bia­nism pro­vi­des for the moment the only social form in which we can live fre­ely. Les­bian is the only con­cept I know of which is beyond the cate­go­ries of sex (woman and man), because the desi­gna­ted sub­ject (les­bian) is not a woman, eit­her eco­no­mi­cally, or poli­ti­cally, or ideo­lo­gi­cally. For what makes a woman is a spe­ci­fic social rela­tion to a man, a rela­tion that we have pre­viously cal­led ser­vitude, [16] a rela­tion which implies per­so­nal and phy­si­cal obli­ga­tion as well as eco­no­mic obli­ga­tion (« forced resi­dence, » [17] domestic cor­vee, con­ju­gal duties, unli­mited pro­duc­tion of child­ren, etc.), a rela­tion which les­bi­ans escape by refu­sing to become or to stay hete­ro­se­xual. We are escapees from our class in the same way as the Ame­ri­can runa­way sla­ves were when esca­ping sla­very and beco­m­ing free. For us this is an abso­lute neces­sity; our sur­vi­val demands that we con­tri­bute all our strength to the destruc­tion of the class of women wit­hin which men appro­priate women. This can be accom­plis­hed only by the destruc­tion of hete­ro­se­xua­lity as a social sys­tem which is based on the opp­res­sion of women by men and which pro­du­ces the doc­trine of the dif­fe­rence bet­ween the sexes to justify this opp­res­sion.

[3] I use the word society with an exten­ded anthro­po­lo­gi­cal mea­ning; strictly speaking, it does not refer to socie­ties, in that les­bian socie­ties do not exist com­ple­tely auto­no­mously from hete­ro­se­xual social sys­tems.